STR Core Facility - user guidelines

The Swedish Twin Registry (STR) constitutes a national research infrastructure open to projects initiated from both academic and industry-based researchers.

Regardless of research interest, all potential projects requiring data access must be reviewed and approved by STR's Expert Committee.

Types of requests for access include:

  • aggregated summary tables or statistics from the STR
  • pseudonymised (coded) files of raw and/or transformed data from STR
  • access to identifying information for new data collection
  • access to biobank samples

Application

A short application is to be submitted to the STR by an applicant with a PhD, MD or equivalent degree.

Prior to submitting an application, interested researchers may contact the STR to obtain further information or request a feasibility test to receive necessary data (i.e. summaries of prevalence) to evaluate the feasibility. Data is only provided when approvals by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority are in place. If the applicant is not based at a Swedish university, we require that there is a collaborator based at a Swedish university to ensure that there is Swedish ethical  permission and that the Swedish research community benefits from our national resource. All applications are handled on a first come, first served basis. The Expert Committee will review and assess the applications in the same order as they are submitted to STR.

The STR Expert Committee meets four times per year and decides on all requests. In order to process your request, a complete application must be received by the STR ​​no later than nine days before an expert committee meeting.

Dates for Expert Committee meetings 2025:

  • 20 February (deadline to apply is 10 February)

For more information, please contact us by e-mail to str-research@meb.ki.se.

How to apply

  1. Navigate to iLab, the web-based tool for core facilities at KI, to register/log in
  2. Fill out the STR application form and attach the documents included in the application

iLab

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Log in to the iLab application system

Your application must include the following

  1. A detailed and compete description of the project (3–5 pages) with:
    • specific aims
    • general background, including relevant literature reference
    • requested variables with inclusion and exclusion criteria
    • methods
    • description of the research group
  2. Curriculum Vitae of the Principal Investigator (PI)
  3. Ethical application and ethical approval (for projects not including new contacts)
    • For projects in which contacts with study persons are to be made, it is recommended that the STR Steering Committee reviews both contact letters and informed consent formulations before these documents are sent for ethical review.

Other requirements

If a researcher conducts a data collection, after approval from the Expert committee, the STR requires the following information to be shared with the registry (as copies or duplicate samples):

  1. information regarding zygosity
  2. suitable biological measurements
  3. suitable biological samples, stored in the KI Biobank

Depending on whether the data or samples is considered of general research interest, the STR may co-sponsor the collection.

Scales that are derived from any data in the STR and used in a publication should be sent to str-research@meb.ki.se, for inclusion in the STR database. This information will then be available for other researchers.

Acknowledgment

The Swedish Twin Registry should be acknowledged in any publication using STR data.

Received data prior to 2023

“We acknowledge The Swedish Twin Registry for access to data. The Swedish Twin Registry is managed by Karolinska Institutet and receives funding through the Swedish Research Council under the grant no 2017-00641.”

Received data 2023 or later

“We acknowledge The Swedish Twin Registry for access to data. The Swedish Twin Registry is managed by Karolinska Institutet and receives funding through the Swedish Research Council under the grant no 2021-00180.”

NAISS Acknowledgment

For publications utilizing genotypic data and/or polygenic indexes, please include the following acknowledgment: 

"The computations/data handling/[SIMILAR] were/was enabled by resources provided by the National Academic Infrastructure for Supercomputing in Sweden (NAISS) at Uppsala Multidisciplinary Center for Advanced Computational Science (UPPMAX) partially funded by the Swedish Research Council under the grant no 2022-06725."